


Sif and the Astronomers Three

by AsterRoc



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Autobiography, BAMF Sif, Character Study, February Femfest, Gen, Graduate School, Id Fic, Inspired by Music, Mild Language, POV Female Character, Sif Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1190400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterRoc/pseuds/AsterRoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sif and the Astronomers Three.  That’s what they are always called, despite the fact that she is as much an astronomer as the guys – and as little an astronomer too, as all of them are still grad students.  Yet the guys are the ones labeled “astronomers” and she, the only woman in their entering class, is the one labeled as “other.” </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>This is my entry for <a href="http://februaryfemfest.tumblr.com/sifweek">Sif Week</a>, Day Two: Strengths and Powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sif and the Astronomers Three

**Author's Note:**

> [Accompanying fanmix on 8tracks.](http://8tracks.com/zandperl/sif-and-the-astronomers-three)
> 
> Betaed/edited by the amazing [thejessbeast](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thejessbeast), who gave me so much feedback and (IMNSHO) turned this from a good story into a great one.

Sif and the Astronomers Three. The phrase is in her head as she is slowly dragged from unconsciousness by the soothing sound of crickets chirping: her first alarm. She slaps around at the side of her bed, manages to grab the phone before it slides off the little table, silences the alarm, and falls back under.

* * *

Sif and the Astronomers Three. As the irritating quacking of ducks pulls her back to the surface again, it sounds almost like a band name. A bit more slapping and poking, the ducks stop quacking abruptly, Sif’s arm falls off the bed, and she is gone again.

* * *

This time it is a loud, garish, artificial noise her phone labels as “digital” that yanks her out of sleep so violently that she wants to throw the phone across the room. Sif and the Astronomers Three. That’s what they are always called, despite the fact that she is as much an astronomer as the guys – and as little an astronomer too, as all of them are still graduate students. Yet the guys are the ones labeled “astronomers” and she, the only woman in their entering class, is the one labeled as “other.” Fuck that noise. Fuck the alarm that won’t turn off no matter how hard she pokes at the screen. Fuck having to wake up at 7am on a Saturday to take another stupid fucking exam. Today is her day to prove wrong all those who scoffed at the idea of a woman being one of the smartest grads this department has ever known. Today is the day of the qualifier exam, the last hurdle between herself and doctoral candidacy. 

Sif finally swipes the screen in the right direction to stop the noise, and is now well and truly awake, though not happy about it. She stumbles out of bed to brush her teeth, then immediately coats them once again in a layer of coffee, sweet, sweet ambrosia of the gods, and her anger begins to fade a bit. Sif and the Astronomers Three. It really would make a good band name. Sif as lead vocals, Fandral on rhythm guitar and backup vocals, Hogun on the bass, and Volstagg on drums. 

As she reaches for the clothes she’d laid out the night before, Sif smiles a little upon realizing that in some ways she is arming herself for battle. Her shirt is her Frisbee team T-shirt from college (they called themselves the “Whirled Tree” and there was an image of a Frisbee disk superimposed on a stylized Yggdrasil); her necklace is a silver atom (given to her by the other girl in her high school physics class); the star-shaped earrings were from her mother; and the graphing calculator that had come with her since trigonometry in tenth grade was a gift from her father (when she told him she was signing up for pre-calc next). She’d bought the 0.9mm mechanical pencils for herself the week before because she always broke the thinner leads when she wrote out the equations energetically, filled with enthusiasm for solving the puzzle, filled with anger that she needed to prove herself yet again. 

And today she will do so one more time. 

Sif grabs the 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew she’d left near her door the night before, there’s no such thing as too much caffeine, and steps out onto the empty Saturday morning streets, music from her study playlist running through her head. 

“ _I broke free on a Saturday morning… I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me._ ”

* * *

Sif sits in the uncomfortable chair, erasing four lines of calculus due to a single error in arithmetic five lines back, and tries to avoid thinking about the inevitable bathroom trip. And that’s another way in which the men who had power over her career have made her life more difficult than for her male peers. She is the only woman in her cohort, they are in the middle of an eight-hour timed exam which is the make-or-break point of their continued graduate careers, and she realizes that the men’s room is only two doors away from the testing room while the women’s room is at the far, far, far end of the hallway. Because of course it never would’ve occurred to the all-male faculty that using the bathroom not only takes her longer physically due to anatomy, but they’d also given her the longer distance to walk as well. 

She holds it, even as she continues to gulp from the bottle of Mountain Dew, one of her trusty weapons against this exam, until she gets to a point where she is stuck and doesn’t know the next step to take. “Inspiration by urination,” Sif thinks to herself as she rises from her seat to make the long trek to the bathroom; the quote from her college friend Thor may be crude, but it’s accurate. If you’re stuck, taking a short walk to the bathroom often gets you unstuck. Too bad it’s not a short walk, but one that is costing her valuable test-taking time. 

Sif repeats her mantra as she walks quickly down the hall: “ _I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me._ ” At least the women’s restrooms in her building are usually quite clean due to their low usage. Now how could she relate the virial theorem to the pressure caused by an OB association? 

She hums to herself as she swipes a bit of toilet paper over the seat, knowing there’s no one there to be bothered by the noise. “ _Out numbered a million to one…_ ” Another one of her inspirational study songs. “ _All of the dicks in this dick town…_ ” She’s not sure if it’s the exact song she’d had playing when last studying the properties of the interstellar medium. “ _Can't keep Johnny down…_ ” And it certainly isn’t what was on when she looked at Jean’s length. “ _Men piled up in a towering mound…_ ” But…

Ideal gas law!

“ _None of them once has found a way…_ ”

Sif hastily finishes up, runs some water over her hands, and runs the 30 meters back to the classroom – “ _To keep Johnny down_ ” – pausing only to open the door quietly so as not to disturb the Astronomers Three at her entrance. Just because everyone else is making her life harder doesn’t mean she should do the same to them. 

“ _I am gonna make it…_ ”

* * *

Sif is the second-to-last astronomer to turn in her exam, but she has not left a single question blank. She hasn’t even left a _part_ of a question blank. She even spent a half hour struggling with the indefinite integral of the square root of 1 minus the natural log of x squared. She’d stepped out to the hallway to pace for a bit while working on that one, her playlist striking up again, though this time she didn’t vocalize it. 

“ _Maybe it isn't all that funny…_ ” She’s going to need to do a series of u-subs. “ _That I've been fighting all my life…_ ” Oh dur, she could pull the squared out of the _ln_ , and then use a trig sub.

“ _I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me._ ”

Sif doesn’t know for sure if she passed as she picks up her things – she can’t know that, since it’s not just based on her score, but also the distribution of grades, and finally a department vote. Once more there are arbitrary barriers in her way, a moving target that she couldn’t know if she could hit until long after she released the arrow. She places her exam on the pile, and steps out of the room, head held high. She has fought hard, tried her best, worked her ass off. 

Sif is pretty sure she has passed. “ _Can't stop, coming in hot…_ ” She’s pretty sure she blew the others out of the water. “ _I should be locked up right on the spot…_ ” She’s pretty sure the faculty would see her score, and see that there was (yet again) no way they could deny her suitability without the hypocrisy of their claims of meritocracy being revealed to all. “ _It's so on right now._ ”

Once in the hallway, she places her calculator in her back pocket, her five mechanical pencils in her backpack, straightens her necklace, and despite her hands shaking from fatigue and caffeine, Sif walks down the hall with a bounce in her step humming to herself.

“ _There will be feasting and dancing //_  
_In Jerusalem next year //_  
_I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Songs specifically featured are, in order of appearance:  
> [This Year](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii6kJaGiRaI) by The Mountain Goats  
> [Can’t Keep Johnny Down](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2nEXHvzwW4) by They Might Be Giants  
> [In My Mind](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9WZtxRWieM) by Amanda Palmer  
> [Raise Your Glass](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjVNlG5cZyQ) by P!nk  
> And as mentioned in the Start Notes, [this fanmix](http://8tracks.com/zandperl/sif-and-the-astronomers-three) contains the full fanmix for this work. 
> 
> This’s inspired by my own life. In the end I did pass the quals. I won’t say that channeling Sif is what got me through it, but it certainly didn’t hurt. Music is actually part of my study strategy since college: I play the same playlist over and over while studying, and if I forget something on the exam, I mentally start playing the songs and that helps me remember. On this particular test I didn't actually forget anything outright, but repeating the songs helped to calm me down when I needed that, or to energize me when I needed that. 
> 
> This is my first work that was betaed / edited by someone, the amazing [thejessbeast](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thejessbeast). She did a great job of suggesting where I could flesh things out to give Sif her own voice. Thanks so much for the help! ☺
> 
> The full playlist (in case it's ever deleted from 8tracks) is:
> 
>   1. This Year - The Mountain Goats
>   2. Can't Keep Johnny Down - They Might Be Giants
>   3. Raise Your Glass - P!nk
>   4. In My Mind - Amanda Palmer
>   5. Pompeii - Bastille
>   6. 100 Years - Five For Fighting
>   7. Flesh - Simon Curtis
>   8. Fireflies - Owl City
>   9. Your Body Is a Machine - The Good Natured
>   10. Science Genius Girl - Freezepop
>   11. No Light, No Light - Florence + The Machine
>   12. Love the Way You Lie (feat. Rihanna) - Eminem
>   13. Little Talks - Of Monsters and Men
>   14. Counting Stars - OneRepublic
>   15. Who Needs Sleep - Barenaked Ladies
>   16. Pink Toenails - Dixie Chicks
>   17. The Monster (feat. Rihanna) - Eminem
> 



End file.
